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Task Group for the Sake of Palestinian Refugees in Syria documented 1,600 cases of enforced disappearance among Palestinian refugees in Syrian regime prisons since 2011, the Anadolu Agency reported yesterday.

In a report issued yesterday, the Task Group said that the real number of enforced disappearance cases is much larger but there are no official statistics issued by the Syrian regime.

It added that it could not get the real number of cases because many families are afraid to report that their relatives are missing.

According to Anadolu, the Task Group called for the Syrian regime to reveal information about hundreds of such cases and other Palestinian detainees whose fate remains unknown.

It described what the Palestinian refugees face in Syrian regime prisons as a “war crime”.

According to UN reports, approximately 450,000 Palestinian refugees are still living in Syria, with around 95 per cent in need of medical assistance.

The UN's human rights chief has attacked the "chilling indifference" to the deaths of thousands of refugees shown by European leaders as the crackdown continues across the continent.

Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that although "heroic efforts" are underway to save lives in the Mediterranean, governments are turning their backs on those who survive the treacherous journey.

"Many ordinary people in Europe have welcomed and supported migrants, but political leaders increasingly demonstrate a chilling indifference to their fate," he told a meeting of the UN human rights council in Geneva.

"I am particularly disturbed by lurid public narratives which appear deliberately aimed at stirring up public fear and panic, by depicting these vulnerable people as criminal invading hordes."

The issue became a topic of debate during the EU referendum, when Nigel Farage unveiled a poster depicting migrants being escorted through Slovenia by police with the caption "breaking point".

More asylum seekers are dying attempting to reach the continent than ever before but those who survive the journey face border closures and tightening legal restrictions making it ever more difficult to gain asylum.
The British Government has scrapped a programmeto resettle unaccompanied child refugees, while Hungary is building a new fence to keep out migrants and the EU is considering initiatives to keep refugees in war-torn Libya.

The vast majority of boats are launched by smugglers in the country, where a fragile government has been unable to regain control of territory controlled by rival armed groups including Isis.

Despite a growing body of evidence raising concern from the UN and humanitarian groups, Britain is among the countries training the Libyan coastguard, while world leaders have agreed to help bolster its capability and Italy has pledged millions of euros in funding for anti-smuggling initiatives.

Mr al-Hussein said he was concerned at calls to establish processing centres for asylum seekers in North Africa and "engage external actors in migration issues, with little regard for human rights".

"Migrants apprehended at sea by the Libyan coastguard or similar agencies may be put at risk of further violence," he added.

"I reiterate the importance of abiding by the principle that people must not be sent back to countries where they may face torture, persecution or threats to their life."

Crossings over the Central Mediterranean have increased after the EU-Turkey deal was imposed to stop refugees taking boats over the Aegean, and countries along the Balkans route from Greece to western Europe closed their borders.
Hungary is building a new and reinforced fence to keep refugees out, while passing anew law allowing all asylum seekers on its territory to be detained and forcibly returned over the border to Serbia.

Mr al-Hussein hit out at the "toxic notions of so-called ethnic purity" put forward by anti-immigration leaders including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, warning that they "hark back to an era in which many people suffered atrociously, Hungarians included".
More than 40 countries were examined in a wide-ranging speech on Wednesday, where the UN was warned that 2017 could prove to be a "pivotal year" for human rights amid terror attacks, security crackdowns, populism and the rise of "authoritarian-minded leaders".

Mr al-Hussein launched a wide-ranging attack on Donald Trump, voicing his concern over the President's new immigration ban, attacks on the press and judiciary and the administration's handling of a series of human rights issues.

"Greater and more consistent leadership is needed to address the recent surge in discrimination, anti-Semitism, and violence against ethnic and religious minorities," he said.

"Vilification of entire groups such as Mexicans and Muslims, and false claims that migrants commit more crimes than US citizens, are harmful and fuel xenophobic abuses."

Americans can show all sorts of documents, such as Social Security cards and diplomas, to show who they are. But for those from countries torn apart by war or political chaos, it's much harder to prove their identities.

That's why a new software tool, unveiled on Monday at the United Nations, is a big deal. It will let millions of refugees and other without documents whip out a phone or other device to quickly show who they are and where they came from.

The tool, developed in part by Microsoft and Accenture, combines biometric data (like a fingerprint or an iris scan) and a new form of record-keeping technology, known as the blockchain, to create a permanent identity.

In practice, this means someone arriving at a border crossing could prove he or she had come from a refugee camp and qualify for aid. Or a displaced person in a new country could use the ID system to call up his or her school records. The tool doesn't have a name yet since it's at the prototype stage but will get one soon.

"Approximately one-sixth of the world’s population cannot participate in cultural, political, economic and social life because they lack the most basic information: documented proof of their existence. Establishing identity is critical to accessing a wide range of activities, including education, healthcare, voting, banking, mobile communications, housing, and family and childcare benefits," Accenture explained in a news release.

The companies have been working on the new system since last year, and unveiled the prototype at a summit in New York called United Nations ID2020. Here is a picture that shows how the system looks on the phone of a user:

"Digital ID is a basic human right," David Treat, a managing director at Accenture, tells Fortune. He likens the new ID technology to the Internet-naming system, which gives a unique address to any given website.

The new ID system is especially promising because of the blockchain technology, which provides crucial privacy features—and allays obvious concerns about the system being abused by all-knowing global governments.

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Blockchain is a tamper-proof ledger system run across multiple computer systems. Once a certain number of computers confirm a given piece of information—such as a financial transaction or, in this case, an identification tool—the fact is recorded as a permanent record on the chain.

In the case of the new global ID system, it works by storing personal information in such a way that the person who owns it is the only own who grants access to it. Other entities—such as an organization or a school—can share relevant records tied to that person, and write it to the blockchain, but the person controls who else can see it.

Treat explained that cryptography helps ensure that organizations who access a person's ID record can only do so for purposes of authentication—confirming they are who they say they are—and not for tracking them, or getting access to all their data.

Microsoft's main contribution to the project is supplying computing infrastructure through its Azure cloud service. The company also works closely with the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, an open-source software group that develops blockchain standards.

Accenture, which caused waves last year by proposing a system to edit blockchains, predicts the ID system will be in use soon but as yet to identify targets for its adoption.

There are fears some of the children are being taken into 'a life of slavery and exploitation'

At least 239 unaccompanied refugee children permanently disappeared from care facilities in the UK in 2015.

It represents a 75 per cent rise in the number of lone asylum-seeking children going missing from care, according to a joint investigation by BBC 5 Live and Buzzfeed News.

Freedom of information requests to 140 local authorities across England and Wales have revealed the significant increase – with 51 children disappearing from care in October 2015 alone.

There are fears some of the children are being taken into “a life of slavery and exploitation”, in the words of the report, suggesting that cannabis farms, the sex industry or sweatshops are likely destinations.

Other findings include that the Home Office is “releasing children into unchecked accommodation” despite concerns they would be trafficked; the missing children are being treated as “low” or “medium” risk; and councils “struggling” to provide enough safe accommodation for children. It found the number of Vietnamese children going missing from care tripled in the last year.

Anne Longfield, who is tasked with protecting the rights of children in England, wrote to French authorities earlier this month to ask them to accelerate the asylum claims of unaccompanied children living in the Calais "Jungle" refugee camp.

There's a glint of pride in Abu Jaafar's eyes as he explains what he does for a living.

He used to work as a security guard in a pub but then he met a group which trades in organs. His job is to find people desperate enough to give up parts of their body for money, and the influx of refugees from Syria to Lebanon has created many opportunities.
"I do exploit people," he says, though he points out that many could easily have died at home in Syria, and that giving up an organ is nothing by comparison to the horrors they have already experienced.

"I'm exploiting them," he says, "and they're benefitting."

His base is a small coffee shop in one of the crowded suburbs of southern Beirut, a dilapidated building covered by a plastic tarpaulin.

At the back, a room behind a rusty partition is stuffed with old furniture and has budgerigars singing in cages in each corner.

From here he has arranged the sale of organs from about 30 refugees in the last three years, he says.

"They usually ask for kidneys, yet I can still find and facilitate other organs", he says.

"They once asked for an eye, and I was able to acquire a client willing to sell his eye.

"I took a picture of the eye and sent it to the guys by Whatsapp for confirmation. I then delivered the client."

The narrow streets in which he operates are crammed with refugees. Around one in four people in Lebanon today have fled the conflict across the border in Syria.

Most aren't allowed to work under Lebanese law, and many families barely get by.

Among the most desperate are Palestinians who were already considered refugees in Syria, and so are not eligible to be re-registered by the UN refugee agency when they arrive in Lebanon. They live in overcrowded camps and receive very little aid.

Almost as vulnerable are those who arrived from Syria after May 2015, when the Lebanese government asked the UN to stop registering new refugees.

"Those who are not registered as refugees are struggling," Abu Jaafar says. "What can they do? They are desperate and they have no other means to survive but to sell their organs."

Some refugees beg on the streets - particularly children. Young boys shine shoes, dodge between cars in traffic jams to sell chewing gum or tissues through the windows, or end up exploited as child labor. Others turn to prostitution.

But selling an organ is one way to make money quickly.

Once Abu Jaafar has found a willing candidate he drives them, blindfolded, to a hidden location on a designated day.

Sometimes the doctors operate in rented houses, transformed into temporary clinics, where the donors undergo basic blood tests before surgery.

"Once the operation is done I bring them back," he says.

"I keep looking after them for almost a week until they remove the stitches. The moment they lose the stitches we don't care what happens to them any longer.
"I don't really care if the client dies, I got what I wanted. It's not my problem what happens next as long as the client got paid."

His most recent client was a 17-year-old boy who left Syria after his father and brothers were killed there.
He's been in Lebanon for three years with no work and mounting debt, struggling to support his mother and five sisters.

So, through Abu Jaafar, he agreed to sell his right kidney for $8,000 (£6,250).

Two days later, clearly in pain despite taking tablets, he was alternately lying down and sitting up on a tattered sofa, trying to get comfortable.

His face was covered in a sheen of sweat and blood had seeped through his bandages.

Abu Jaafar won't reveal how much he made from the deal. He says he doesn't know what happens to the organs after they have been removed, but he thinks they're exported.

Across the Middle East there's a shortage of organs for transplant, because of cultural and religious objections to organ donation. Most families prefer immediate burial.

But Abu Jaafar claims there are at least seven other brokers like him operating across Lebanon.
"Business is booming," he says. "It's growing and not decreasing. It definitely boomed after the Syrian migration to Lebanon."

He knows what he does is against the law but doesn't fear the authorities. In fact he is brazen about it. His phone number is spray-painted on the walls near his home.

In his neighbourhood, he is both respected and feared. As he walks around people stop to joke and argue with him.

He has a handgun tucked under his leg as we talk.

"I know that what I am doing is illegal but I am helping people", he says.

"That's how I perceive it. The client is using the money to seek a better life for himself and his family.
"He's able to buy a car and work as a taxi driver or even travel to another country.

"I am helping those people and I don't care about the law."

In fact, he says, it's the law that lets many refugees down by restricting access to work and aid.

"I am not forcing anyone to undertake the operation," he says. "I am only facilitating based on someone's request."

He lights a cigarette and raises an eyebrow.

"How much for your eye?" he asks.

Abu Jaafar is not his real name - he would only agree to talk to the BBC on condition of anonymity.

Human Rights Watch has accused the Jordanian government of summarily deporting hundreds of registered Syrian refugees, despite the possible harm they may face by going back to their war-torn country.

"Jordanian authorities have been summarily deporting Syrian refugees - including collective expulsions of large families," HRW said in the report.

The US-based rights advocacy group released a 27-page document that chronicled the deportation of 400 refugees during the first five months of 2017. It has also called on other countries to increase their assistance to Jordan, which has hosted more than 650,000 Syrian refugees.

"Jordan shouldn't be sending people back to Syria without making sure they wouldn't face a real risk of torture or serious harm and unless they have had a fair opportunity to plead their case for protection," said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at HRW.

The rights group also accused Jordan of violating its obligations under the Arab Charter of Human Rights, to which it is a party.

According to the report, some 300 registered refugees returned to Syria voluntarily during that time, and another 500 returned under "unclear" circumstances.

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war that is now in its seventh year, Jordan has hosted hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, according to the UN.

But the Jordanian authorities have placed the number at more than one million people.

The report includes testimonies of 35 Syrian refugees in Jordan, and 13 others who have recently been deported to Syria.

Those interviewed say the Jordanian authorities provided little evidence of misconduct before forcefully deporting them, and claim that they were not given the opportunity to appeal or seek legal assistance.Refugees left stranded

Last year, at least six Jordanian soldiers were killed in an attack near the country's border with Syria, in the northeast Rukban district.
Following the incident, the Jordanian army declared the northern and northeastern border with Syria as closed military zones.

As a result, some 50,000 refugees were left stranded in remote border areas, with limited access to food, water and humanitarian aid.
Ahmed Benchemsi, HRW's advocacy and communications director of the MENA division, told Al Jazeera that the Jordanian authorities cite security reasons as the basis of these deportations.

Since the expulsion of Syrian refugees coincides with attacks on Jordanian security forces, the authorities have not provided "direct links with these people to the attacks," said Benchemsi.

"It [expulsions] should not be done in an arbitrary manner."

HRW reached out the Jordanian authorities for explanation in August, but did not receive a response, said Benchemsi.

"We believe it is somehow linked to the attacks against Jordanian forces. This is what local aid workers tell us," he said.

"The return of refugees is voluntary and not to any dangerous areas," he told local news media.

According to local media, he also said international organisations should do more to pressure other countries to host more refugees.'Minor violations'

Though Jordanian authorities regularly cite security concerns as reasons behind deportations and border closures, local rights group say that deportation orders can come from more than one institution in Jordan.

"Sometimes, minor violations can trigger deportations," Essa Al Mazareeq, head of the Syrian refugee team at the Amman-based National Center for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera.

"Orders can come from the ministry of labour, the ministry of foreign affairs, or from the public prosecutor's office - all for different reasons," he explained. "But decisions based on security issues will always be above us."

According to Al Mazareeq, though not formally announced, Jordan's borders with Syria remain largely closed-off, with authorities only granting a limited number of people entry to the country.

Hundreds of thousands fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa have tried to reach Europe in recent years.

Four-month-old Syrian baby Faris Ali froze to death in a tent in Turkey, five-year-old Afghan Sajida Ali's body washed ashore after a shipwreck, and tiny Samuel drowned with his mother as she tried to reach Spain after leaving home in Congo.

The three children are among thousands of victims listed by a German newspaper in an attempt to put a human face on the tragedy that has unfolded in the Mediterranean where thousands of refugees and migrants have died en route to Europe.

Der Tagesspiegel newspaper said it wanted to show the victims "as human beings, with an origin, a past, a life."

Not all those listed drowned in shipwrecks. Some were thrown overboard.

The document is headlined a "List of 33,293 registered asylum seekers, refugees and migrants, who died because of the restrictive policies of Fortress Europe."

Hundreds of thousands fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East, Asia and Africa have tried to reach Europe in recent years.

Some European countries have built fences along their borders, as others have bickered over how to handle the crisis.

Compiled from media and UN sources, the list also includes many who died after reaching Europe.

Last January, two Iraqi men, Hardi Ghafour, 29, and Talat Abdulhamid, 36, froze to death in Bulgaria's mountainous border with Turkey after two days walking through snow.

Others have died in fires in refugee camps or been hit by lorries on motorways.

The document also lists scores of suicides; some have set fire to themselves, others have hanged themselves with sheets or jumped from buildings.

Several of those named died in racist attacks or other violence after thinking they had finally found safety.

Somali teenager Ahmed Hassan was murdered in a racist stabbing at a school in Sweden two years ago.

Many of the victims come from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and West Africa.

But hundreds of those who have died at sea are simply identified as "unknown." Only the details of their deaths are given.

The biggest single tragedy happened in May 2016 when 550 people drowned after two fishing boats sank off the Libyan coast.

The list compiled by Turkish-born artist Banu Cennetoglu dates back to 1993, but most deaths relate to the last six years.

German teenager who claimed she had been kidnapped and raped by migrants for 30 hours made up the whole story

By Sara Malm - 1 February 2016

A 13-year-old German girl who claimed she had been kidnapped and raped by migrants made up the entire story, police have said.

The girl, only known as Lisa F, told police she had been taken from a suburb in east Berlin and held captive for 30 hours by 'foreign-looking' men who raped her.

Lisa F. is a member of Berlin's Russian community, and her made-up tale was widely reported in Russian media and saw Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accuse Germany of 'sweeping problems under the rug'.

Lisa F. whose full surname cannot be revealed due to German privacy law, was reported missing by her parents two weeks ago when she 'disappeared' on her way to school in Marzahn, Berlin.

She reappeared after 30 hours, and claimed she had been kidnapped by 'men of Middle Eastern or north African appearance,' the Guardian reports.

Her allegations aroused outrage in Berlin's Russian community and Russian media have reported extensively on it.

About 700 people protested in front of Chancellor Angela Merkel's office on Saturday holding banners reading 'Our children are in danger' and 'Today my child, tomorrow yours'.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Germany of ' hushing up' the case in the wake of the migrant crisis and the sex mob attacks in Cologne on New Years Eve.

He told a Moscow news conference on Tuesday: 'It is clear that the girl under no circumstances disappeared for 30 hours voluntarily.'

His German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier accused Russia of exploiting the case for 'political propaganda' and to influence a debate about immigration to Germany, which registered 1.1 million new arrivals last year.

However, Berlin prosecutor's office spokesman Martin Steltner has now confirmed that there was no evidence to support the rape and kidnapping claims made by Lisa F.

Mobile phone location tracking data did not support the girl's account that migrants held her for 30 hours.

She eventually admitted to police that she had made up the story after an issue at school had made her afraid to go home to her parents.

The investigation found that she had had voluntary sexual contacts with two 20-year-old men before she disappeared, Steltner added, and they were not connected to her absence.

The prosecutor's office is now investigating the men for suspected sexual abuse of a minor.

Alleged sex crimes by migrants have rocked Germany and piled pressure on the authorities after over 600 women reported sexual attacks in Cologne on New Year's Eve, most blamed on asylum seekers.

"I saw maybe three people who were beaten. That was no football brawl or something similar. They targeted migrants. I was quite scared and ran away," an eyewitness told the Aftonbladet newspaper.

Before the attacks, the mob handed out leaflets with the slogan "It is enough now!" which threatened to give "the North African street children who are roaming around" the "punishment they deserve".

The leaflet refers to the death of social worker Alexandra Mezher, who died after being stabbed at a refugee shelter for unaccompanied children. Four people have been arrested in connection with the attacks - one for assaulting a police officer, while the others were charged with being masked in public, which is illegal in Sweden. All risk fines.

After the attack, the Swedish Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi group, released a statement claiming the attack had "cleaned up criminal immigrants from North Africa that are housed in the area around the Central Station".

The statement added: "These criminal immigrants have robbed and molested Swedes for a long time."

"Police have clearly shown that they lack the means to stave off their rampage, and we now see no other alternative than to ourselves hand out the punishments they deserve."

Sweden received a record 160,000 refugees last year.

The country has seen a sharp decline in newcomers since photo ID checks were introduced this month.

A Small Town In Italy Was Losing Population. Now Syrian Refugees Are Key To Its Survival

By Abby Sewell - 5/1/2017

From the kitchen of their new apartment, Mohammed Ali and Kinda Nonoo watched their children run across a rooftop terrace with a view of the rolling green hills of southern Italy. They could see a shining sliver of the Mediterranean Sea, four miles away.

The tranquility of the scene was a marked change from war-torn Aleppo, Syria, which Ali and his family had fled nearly five years ago, and the chaotic situation they had found in Lebanon afterward.

And unlike in Lebanon, where the estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees were seen as pulling jobs away from the local population, leaders in this Italian community were pinning their hopes on the refugees helping to rebuild its economy.

The family from Aleppo had landed in the southern province of Reggio Calabria, an area that young Italians have largely abandoned in search of better economic opportunities in the north and abroad, leaving behind shuttered schools and fallow fields. In the four-story building the Syrian family now occupied, the two floors below were empty.

Over the last decade, a flood of migrants and refugees have begun to replace the Italians who left. From 2008 to 2013, the percentage of foreign migrant workers in the Italian farm industry nearly doubled to 37% from 19%, according to the National Institute of Agricultural Economics.

The town of Riace, where Ali and his family settled when they first arrived in Italy, has garnered international attention in recent years for making a deliberate effort to attract migrants from around the world. Immigrants from more than 20 countries now make up one-third of the town’s population of 1,500, said Mayor Domenico Lucano.

A safer journey

The transition, for some, has not been easy.

The Syrian couple and their five children arrived in Italy in late February via the “humanitarian corridors” program launched a year ago by a pair of nongovernmental organizations affiliated with the Catholic Church and a coalition of Protestant churches.

The project, funded by the money Italian citizens divert from their taxes to the churches, has brought about 800 Syrian refugees from Lebanon to communities throughout Italy since February 2016. It will bring 200 more refugees from Lebanon and possibly Morocco, along with about 500 Africans now living in Ethiopia.

Many new arrivals cross the Mediterranean on smuggler boats — and many more don’t make it. Last year, more than 5,000 people died in the Mediterranean, according to the United Nations refugee agency. The main aim of the new humanitarian corridors project was to prevent refugees from attempting the dangerous sea crossing, said Paolo Naso of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy, one of the architects of the program.

Under the new initiative, the church organizations fly the refugees to Rome and take them to their new homes in communities around the country.

Naso and others hope, in part, that a new generation of workers from abroad could help replace the nation’s shrinking workforce if they can be integrated into Italian society. “Our population is aging and declining and the decay is very severe, especially in the rural areas,” he said.

Italy has taken in fewer than 1,000 refugees through the official U.N. resettlement program since 2015, but has seen much larger numbers arriving in smuggler boats.

The arrivals have been met with some surges of anti-immigrant sentiment. Last year, residents of the central town of Gorino put up barricades to block the arrival of a small group of refugee women. But migrants and refugees have also had an influential defender in Pope Francis, who has brought a few Syrian refugees to the Vatican and urged Catholic parishes to take in more.

In Riace, the migrants come from sub-Saharan Africa, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and, now, Syria. Immigrants herd sheep in the rolling hills surrounding the town, drive tractors on the winding road leading up to it, sweep the streets in the town square and work alongside Italian residents in the handful of artisan shops in the town’s center.

A ‘humane alternative’

The push to welcome migrants earned Lucano, the mayor, a spot on Fortune magazine’s list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders last year.

“We are basically proposing a humane alternative,” the mayor said in an interview at Riace’s City Hall. “This is the message we are sending to this world where closures and barriers are prevailing.”

On a recent afternoon, Gabriel Effah, a Ghanaian who came in a smuggler’s boat from Libya eight months ago, sat on a bench outside the town’s park chatting with a friend as a gaggle of newly arrived African teenagers passed by on the road leading into the town’s center.

“Bambinos,” Effah said, using his new Italian. “Every day people come.”

Stella Awini, 30, also from Ghana, left her young son with relatives and made the sea journey three years ago. After the boat landed on the island of Lampedusa, police brought her to Riace. When she first arrived, she swept the streets, then helped supervise children in the local school until it closed because of a lack of enrollment. Now she cooks for unaccompanied minors living in a group home.

“The life in Riace is very good for me,” she said. “They take immigrants as their own, as Italian people.”

About 100 of the migrants in Riace have settled as long-term residents, Lucano said. Others, like the newly arrived Syrian families, find the situation less welcoming and move on.

Tears of happiness

When Ali and Nonoo unloaded their luggage at the airport in Beirut in preparation for their flight to Italy, their 15-year-old daughter, Mais, broke down in tears of happiness and relief.

In Aleppo, Mais had watched her aunt — Ali’s sister — and five cousins die in an airstrike below the family’s apartment.

Ali and his family fled to Lebanon, where they escaped the bombs, but not all violence. Mais’ brother Ali, a plump and cheerful 14-year-old, bears a scar below one knee from a knife attack by a group of older boys. The young men were affiliated with Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim political party and militia that supports Syrian President Bashar Assad and sees the refugees as enemies, Nonoo said.

“There was no security there, never, never,” she said. “Even if we wanted to go out to see the doctor, we tried to make sure no one would see us. Here, the first thing that has improved is that there is security.”

But in other ways, the transition has been difficult. In Riace, few of the other immigrants spoke Arabic, and the family didn’t get along with the two Ethiopians who served as interpreters and go-betweens with the local authorities.

After a month in Riace, Ali and his family asked to be relocated to a nearby town, Gioiosa Ionica, where they joined another Syrian family.

Gioiosa Ionica has a smaller immigrant population — about 100 among 7,000 inhabitants — but some local leaders are hoping to attract more.

Maurizio Zavaglia, president of the town council, hopes the Syrian families and other migrants will help revive the local farming industry and bring in tourists looking for a quiet retreat amid vineyards and olive groves.

“Before, the people who came here stayed for just a little time because after a while they saw the condition of this area, that we are not very rich, there is a high rate of unemployment,” he said. “After a while they went, some to Germany, Switzerland, all over. The challenge with these families is to give them a sense of stability and a longer permanency.”

‘My head is hurting’

In Gioiosa Ionica, Ali and Nonoo said, the people were kind, but the family still felt isolated, and the language barrier became an additional problem as Mais was suffering from a perplexing medical issue. In Riace, she had begun to complain of persistent severe headaches and dizziness. Eventually, the family was able to get her to a hospital, where a doctor gave her medication. It didn’t help.

A week after the move to Gioiosa Ionica, Mais collapsed in the hallway one afternoon, screaming, “My head is hurting me!” Zavaglia and an Italian friend happened to be present. The Italians called paramedics, who took the girl to a hospital in another town.

The family came home several hours later with a referral to another hospital and no answer to what was causing the problem.

The next day, with the children playing on the terrace after dinner, Ali and Nonoo talked anxiously about the difficulty of accessing medical care in the remote area and in another language, and about the prospects of finding work that would sustain them once they stop receiving the small amount of aid they were getting via the program.

In Syria, Ali had run a restaurant and bakery. He hoped to do the same in Italy, but without enough money or a grasp of Italian, the prospect seemed far-fetched.

“We can work, but without the language it’s difficult,” Nonoo said. “We love Italy and the Italian people and the language, but if they give us low wages, I don’t know.”

Could they go to Canada instead? Ali asked. Or Germany?

But the children were happy with their new home. In Lebanon, they hadn’t gone to school for most of the last five years. Now after a few weeks of Italian lessons, they had learned to rattle off numbers, months, names of fruits and vegetables and were excited to start attending the local public school.

“It’s much better here,” said Ali, the couple’s son. “Here, there is hope.”

A Moroccan man passing by as the boy and one of his younger sisters stood outside a neighbor’s house one afternoon stopped and asked in Arabic, “Are you Arab?”

Yes, Ali told him, from Syria.

“Thank God for your safety,” the man said, and smiled as he continued down the otherwise empty street.

In a Pretty Little Hilltop Town in Italy, White Supremacist Terrorist Gunning Down Refugees

An Italian skinhead tied to the alt-right party leading Italian election polls takes matters into his own hands to solve the migrant crisis.

ROME—Luca Traini, 28, wrapped an Italian flag around his neck, grabbed his Glock and got into his black Alfa Romeo 147 with one apparent motive: to shoot African migrants.

He then drove street to street around the small town of Macerata, shooting five men and one woman, injuring two seriously, before police were able to stop the shooting spree in front of the town’s monument to fallen soldiers. There, he then got out of his car, gave the Fascist salute and admitted to the crime, say police.

Traini, a muscled-up sometime boxer who ran for a local political post under the banner of Italy’s far-right Northern League party in 2017, had told his friends at the gym a day earlier, “I have a pistol and I’m not afraid to use it,” according to local Italian media reports.

Racial tensions in the small hilltop town of Macerata in the Marche region reached a boiling point last week with the arrest of a Nigerian migrant for the murder of 18-year-old Pamela Mastropietro who had been dismembered and stuffed into two trolley suitcases and left in a vacant field on the town’s city limits.

Photographs of Mastropietro as a teenager showed a pretty girl with long auburn hair and big dark eyes. But she had been in rehab, and had walked away from her treatment center two days before she died. Her clothes and blood was found in a house occupied by the Nigerian migrant arrested in connection with the murder.

Several people interviewed by local press after the shootings said Traini was in love with the victim of the crime. Autopsy reports have not been released to determine the cause of her death before her dismemberment, and no one has confirmed that Mastropietro reciprocated Traini’s feelings.

Marco Valerio Verni, the dead woman’s uncle, told RAI that they did not support Traini’s act if it was to avenge the death of their loved one. “All we want is justice, but we cannot fight barbarism with more barbarism,” he said. “Such actions are not justifiable. This country is fed up -- but such actions can never be justified.”

Verni was referring to what can easily be described as extreme racial tensions in the country ahead of March 4 national elections. Fear and anger are being fueled by the country’s far-right parties who are all campaigning on anti-immigration platforms.

Matteo Salvini, leader of the Northern League, of which Traini was a card-carrying member, distanced his party from the shooter in the name of the party, but still blamed the current “open migration policy” for these racial tensions. The Northern League has coupled with Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party to run as a coalition that is currently polling ahead of the center left Democratic Party and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

Salvini, whose rallies often bring out supporters toting Mussolini and Hitler posters, is campaigning on a promise to immediately expel 100,000 African immigrants from Italy in his first year in office. More than 600,000 mostly sub-Saharan African migrants have entered Italy illegally by sea in the last four years. Migration is the top issue in the campaign ahead of the March 4 vote with all parties campaigning to stem the flow of migrants into the country.

Unlike the Northern League, the alt-right Forza Nuova neo-fascist party embraced the shooter, reportedly offering to pay Traini’s legal bills. Roberto Fiori, the party leader wrote a lengthy Facebook post supporting the shooter’s actions. “The degeneration of the immigration phenomenon, now totally out of control, the Nigerian tribal criminality that explodes as we expected it would, have happened, our young people are now at the mercy of forces that I would not hesitate to define as satanic,” he wrote.

"The only answer to these serious facts must be politics: to guard our neighborhoods, even physically oppose drug dealers, to prevent our cities from becoming lethal traps for our youth and an ideal place for all sorts of criminals and murderers,” Fiori wrote.

“I would not want the liberal left-wing to be unleashed against a young man who was certainly wrong, but who saw his city transformed in a short time from paradise to hell,” he said with typical hyperbole.

It costs a minimum of 880,000 euros (£800,000; $1m), rising for each additional family member.

Three quarters of that is a non-refundable contribution to Malta's National Development and Social Fund, which finances education, health and job creation projects. The rest is split between investments in government bonds and owning or renting a home for at least five years.

The Caribbean island of St Kitts and Nevis has been selling citizenship since 1984, but since 2011 Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Cyprus have all launched their own schemes.

"It's the insurance policy of the 21st Century," according to Christian Kaelin, the head of residency and citizenship planning firm, Henley and Partners.

He says there's been a "rapid expansion" in this area, partly fuelled by governments looking for new revenue sources, but also because of geopolitical unrest, for example in the Middle East.

Wealthy people can use such schemes as a way of escaping trouble or dramatic political change. But aside from security concerns, many simply want to offer opportunities to their children or make it easier to run a business.

"It's about mobility and personal flexibility, with access to other countries. We have a client who is an American but he has two important investments in Italy and the Netherlands," Mr Kaelin says.

He needs a work permit in both. If he acquires citizenship in Malta, we don't need to deal with any work permit or other issues," says Mr Kaelin.

That's because Malta is in the European Union and part of its Schengen Area - enabling passport-free movement across most of EU. This is one of the scheme's strongest selling points.

Enquiries from the UK rose slightly after the Brexit vote, but no-one has yet signed up. "It's clear the UK will find some sort of arrangement with the EU," says Mr Kaelin.

"If a Brit comes to me and asks if they should buy a Maltese passport I'd say no forget it, just relax."

Malta's citizenship scheme is also popular because it's relatively cheap and quick. Applicants usually receive their passports within 12 to 18 months.

Property requirement

The programme requires applicants to either buy a property worth at least 350,000 euros, or rent one for at least 16,000 euros a year for five years.

More than 80% of applicants for passports take the rental option. However, there is increasing concern that many properties remain, leading some people in Malta to question applicants' intentions.

"These billionaires aren't interested in living in Malta, they just want access to the EU" says Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. "They probably have no intention of ever setting foot here. If they were really interested in staying they would buy a home."

Malta's central bank has said the Individual Investor Programme is one of the factors pushing up house prices in Malta by some 7% each year, and rents by about 10%.

Jonathan Cardona, chief executive of Identity Malta, which runs the programme, agrees EU access is a key selling point for a Maltese passport but argues that the island is an attractive investment in its own right.

"I know one who has invested about 70m euros in Malta. Another one is in the process of opening a factory in the pharmaceutical industry, and I know of another who has opened an IT company.

"Some of them might not have invested seriously yet, but you can never tell what might happen in a few years' time."

Mr Cardona is keen to point out the financial significance of the donations applicants have made. These now total more than 220m euros and are worth about 2.5% of Malta's GDP.

"Because of their wealth and what they have done to achieve their status, they have quite a large footprint so we are able to do a lot of due diligence on them," he says.

"Other economic migrants, especially when they come without any documentation - we don't even know where they are coming from or the language they speak."

Citizenship debate

But for some, citizenship is about more than just numbers.

"A passport is something which should not be for sale, it's something you belong to, part of your DNA," says Helga Ellul, who was born in Germany but has lived in Malta for more than 40 years.

She moved to the island to run German toymaker Playmobil's operations there, employing more than 1,000 workers. She married, had two children and now has three grandchildren, and 15 years ago she applied for and was granted Maltese citizenship, without handing over hundreds of thousands of euros.

"It wasn't an easy decision for me to give up my German passport," she adds.

"When I took the decision it was because I really felt I belong to this country, that I would remain here. I have so many more friends here, I'm so recognised here, and part of this whole society, and I think if you would ask people in Malta I think they would all say I earned it."

But what right can any of us really claim to citizenship? After all, most of us acquire it through our parents, by chance.

Javier Hidalgo, a political theorist at the University of Richmond in Virginia, believes citizenship is always unearned and that there's often an inherent hypocrisy in a moral aversion to treating it as a commodity.

"If you're a sceptic about immigration restrictions, like me, then you'll be sceptical about selling citizenship, because you might think we're obligated to give people access to the country for free.

"But most countries and most people are quite happy to restrict immigration. If you think that's OK, then what's the problem with selling it?

"You're already in favour of excluding a lot of people. Why not make some money off of admitting some of them who you would otherwise be entitled to exclude?"

Amar Al-Sadi and her family have bought and live in their Maltese home, and she is studying in the country along with her siblings.

She says they've immersed themselves in Maltese life and have been welcomed by their new neighbours, making plenty of friends.

"But I don't think everyone is as fortunate as we were, and that's really sad."

Three women employed at a refugee accommodation center in Örnsköldsvik Municipality were discovered to have started intimate relationships with unaccompanied tenants in their teens. The incident was ultimately discovered by the municipality and the police were contacted.

The ladies later resigned, whereupon an internal investigation of the incident began, the Nyheter Idag news outlet reported.

Mats Gidlund, Head of Social Assistance in the municipality of Örnsköldsvik, stated that the municipality must work to establish a clear boundary between the private and the professional in interactions between employees and residents.

"This is clearly remarkable. Because we also think that what is happening is serious, we have reported it to both the police and the Health and Social Care Inspectorate (IVO)," Mats Gidlund told the Allehanda daily

​Previously, an investigation was launched into a local refugee center in the town of Åmål, where a female employee reportedly gave a lap dance and had intimate relations with underage inmates.

In the summer of 2017, a debate flared up concerning single middle-aged women, disparagingly called "batik witches," pushing for a more generous immigration policy to be able to get access to more unaccompanied refugees as "boytoys" in order to bed them.

The debate was intensified after Youtubers Videomannen and En Arg Blatte Talar (also known as Angry Foreigner) made a series of videos featuring copious numbers of middle-aged Swedish women posing with "refugee children," some of which appear to be in their thirties, in a suggestive manner.

EABT mentioned over a dozen cases where Swedish women who worked with asylum seekers were revealed to have sex with them. In a few of the cases he mentions, police investigations have been started, whereas other cases led to internal investigations.

​Municipality official Helena Axelson-Fisk reacted strongly to Nyheter Idag's article, claiming that the comments field was full of "men in need of a lay."

In 2015, Sweden received a record 35,000 asylum applications from "lone children," followed by 2,200 in 2016. In 2016 alone, "unaccompanied children" cost Swedish taxpayers 26 billion SEK ($3 bln), although medical investigations later showed that a three out of four were in fact much older than initially stated and deliberately lied about their age.

There is a growing trend in Austria of middle aged or older women enticing young male asylum seekers with favours and money for sexual gratification and making the young migrant men dependent on them.

During the course of the migrant crisis, a vast majority of the migrants who came to Austria were young men, many of them travelling alone some of them targetted by Islamists, drug gangs and now in Austria, older sex-starved women.

A new report claims that the trend is steadily growing and now many young male migrants depend on these so-called "sugar mamas" for their financial benefits in exchange for sex OE24 reports.

Vienna magazine Biber and Austrian broadcaster ORF both reported on the growing trend claiming that while many older Austrian women have gone on "sex vacations" to African countries in the past to have sexual relations with men there, having sex with asylum seekers in Austria is a new phenomenon.

Some migrants even complain that the older Austrian women want too much sex. An asylum seeker named Hasan told the Biber magazine, "She wants sex with me four times a day, I am a sex machine for her, nothing more." Hasan said he wouldn't leave the woman though because he had become accustomed to his new lifestyle.

The 24-year-old Iraqi said the woman named Linda (not her real name) had approached him at a bar and offered to let him live with her. Hasan said Linda paid for everything he needed including a 120 euro a month gym membership at an upscale gym in Vienna.

Manfred Buchner of the Austrian Men's Health Centre said that the asylum seekers remain in these relationships because they become dependent on the women. "There is a great dependency. Not only mentally, but also materially. Many of these men face homelessness," Buchner said.

Reports of the sexual abuse of young male asylum seekers by women has also been reported in asylum centres and makeshift asylum camps like the former Calais Jungle. Last year, Open Borders activists who volunteered in Calais were accused of "sex tourism" when it emerged that many were engaged insexual relationshipswith migrants including children.

In one case a woman who volunteered at the Calais camp decided to marry her much younger Syrian asylum seeker lover after meeting him at the camp. The woman, identified as Sarah Gayton, a management consultant, quit her job five days after meeting the migrant but insisted that her initial motivations for volunteering weren't driven by sex tourism.

In the rundown Pedion Areos Park, older men walk slowly by young asylum seekers before agreeing on a price for sex.

Athens, Greece - Mahmoud looks out over the chaotic mess of rooftops and aerials and towards the neglected park he now calls home. He's wearing a red hoodie, blue jeans and a black cap. Everything suggests he is a typical 20-year-old, apart perhaps from the jagged scar on his brow.

"I am ashamed about what I do for money, but I will tell you," he says.

The Afghan asylum seeker clasps his hands tightly in front of him as he speaks. "I didn't know anyone when I arrived in Athens," he begins. "Life was very difficult and it still is. I don't have a home so I sleep every night in a park nearby.

"I had only two options when I arrived - one was to become a thief or a drug dealer," Mahmoud explains. "But I am not that kind of person.

"The other option was to stay in the park and have sex with older men, or anyone ... that asked for it for five or 10 euros [around $5 and $10] ...."

His only shelter is a cheap tent that he shares with an Iranian asylum seeker. Perched on the concrete roof of a small maintenance building hidden among the trees of Pedion Areos Park, it offers little protection from the cold. A bag of oranges provides breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Mahmoud says the money he makes selling sex only covers the cost of his daily food. He cannot afford to save anything.

He speaks regretfully about his work but sees no way out.

"This is my only source of money now," he says. "I've made a mistake, and now I'm deep in this s***."

But Mahmoud isn't alone. Pedion Areos Park has become a hub of illegal male prostitution, sometimes involving refugees as young as 15.

Greece has strict laws regulating prostitution. Sex workers must register, be aged over 18, legal residents in Greece and work in a licensed brothel. Despite this, illegal street prostitutes, who are often migrants and refugees, are estimated to outnumber licensed prostitutes by 20 to one.

While the majority of Athens' sex workers are female, Pedion Areos has long been a hot spot for male sex work.

The park, although grand and sprawling, has, like its inhabitants, been largely ignored. The large statue of King Constantine I that stands at its entrance has been covered with graffiti. Used condoms and tissues litter the ground.

Those familiar with the park say that the majority of the sex workers there are Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian.

Neno, a Bulgarian Roma, arrived in Athens eight years ago and has been a sex worker in the park ever since. He says he doesn't particularly mind the work, but that it doesn't pay well.

"A lot of people hate this job, they don't want to be here," he says. "For me, it's OK. I don't have a problem with it. Just the money isn't good."

Neno isn't homeless. He lives in a small town to the southeast of Athens which is popular with tourists, and takes the bus into the capital each weekday. The bus stops directly outside the park.

At the weekends, he makes a little extra money playing guitar in tavernas along the coast.

For Neno, being a sex worker is a job like any other. For Mahmoud and the park's other homeless residents, it is a desperate attempt to survive. They spend their mornings waiting and warming themselves by fires started in steel cans, into which they put anything that will burn, often producing a choking smoke.

"The Greek guys [clients] don't come in the day because they think they might get caught," Mahmoud explains. "They wait until later to come to the park, when they'll be safer."

Business begins in the late afternoon as the winter sun starts to set and the few dog-walkers and runners leave the park. Their busiest time is from dusk until midnight, when the majority of those in the park are sex workers or their clients.

As the light in the park fades, middle-aged men walk slowly past benches on which young men and boys sit, as though perusing shop windows. By now, a different demographic has arrived: unaccompanied minors, refugees who have been orphaned, are travelling alone or have been separated from their family during the journey, and see the park as a place to make money.

"The main issue is that they have no money, either for their daily lives or to pay for a smuggler," explains Kenneth Hansen, the programme manager at Faros, an NGO that runs a shelter for unaccompanied minors close to the park.

"Some of them have told [us] that they have sex with men in order to do other things, to have money to go and buy a new phone," he says.

"One boy told us he had sex with two men and got five euros [$5] so he could buy cigarettes ... One guy told us he had sex with a man so he could pay to have sex with a woman."

The clients are always Greek, explains Mahmoud. Most are in their 60s, but some can be as young as 30; others as old as 90. "You see men of all ages [buying sex]," he says. "Some are young men and some look like they might die the next day."

Some of the sex workers are clearly on familiar terms with the clients, laughing and chatting openly with the ones they recognise. Others, often the younger ones, sit awkwardly, saying little.

"Usually the men see me in the park, they come closer to me then ask me, 'Where are you from?'" says Mahmoud. "I've learned a bit of Greek so I understand and we speak a bit. Then they sit down next to me and that's how it starts."

Once a price has been agreed, they move somewhere more private - but that usually just means going behind a bush a few metres away.

The clients

Costas is 46 and has good job at a logistics company. Most evenings after work, he goes home to his apartment in a suburb of Athens, where he lives alone. But three or four evenings a month he changes his clothes and drives to the park to look for sex.

His routine has been the same for 10 years, he explains.

"It's easy to find sex here," he says. "I normally stay for about an hour before I find someone to go with."

He is familiar with two or three of the sex workers at the park whom he knows by name and sees regularly. Five euros is the going rate, he says, regardless of nationality.

Costas insists that he never has sex with refugees or anyone under the age of 18. That would be "wrong", he says. But he does acknowledge that he can't be sure about the age or nationality of those he does have sex with.

Only his closest friends know about his visits to the park, he says.

Yiorgos says he is 52 but he looks much older. He lives an hour away but comes to visit a friend who lives near the park three times a week. They go for coffee and, on his way home, Yiorgos walks through the park, looking for sex workers.

"[The sex workers] are 17, 18, 20, 30, 50, it depends," he says. "The day before, there was one that was 16, small," he adds, before looking around nervously. "They should be 18," he admits. A sex worker in their 20s could have sex five times a night, earning up to 50 euros, he explains.

He doesn't believe that what he does is wrong. "If I steal, it's a problem. But I don't steal. Neither do I fight .... If I fight or steal, yes, the police will come. But if not, they don't come. What could they tell me? All they can do is ask me why I am sitting here. Is it wrong?" he says.
Prices vary, explains Tassos Smetopoulos, a volunteer who organises a weekly food donation in the park. "In Pedion Areos, it starts from five euros [$5] and goes to 200 [$213]," he says.

"Some of [the clients] say to the boys, 'OK, you can come to my apartment, to have a little party. Some friends of mine will be there too. You can stay the night.' Something like this can go up to 200 euros [$213]. It depends on what they're asking and what the boys accept."

In search of a better life

Shortly after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, Mahmoud, who was then five, left his native Herat with his family. "My father went first before us and then the rest of our family followed him," he says.

"Everybody in Afghanistan then who wanted to seek a good life usually went to Iran, so that's what we chose to do."

In Iran, his family lived on the margins, unable to find legal work once their temporary residence permit, which they couldn't afford to renew, had expired. After five years of schooling, Mahmoud started working to support his family.

At 15, he left Iran ahead of his family to search for work opportunities in Turkey.

"I stayed for five years in Turkey working on a construction site, trying to earn some money and to organise my trip to Greece," he says.

But so far, he hasn't found the greater opportunities he had hoped for in Europe.

"If I find any way at all, I want to go to Germany because I know some people there. Maybe I could find a good job," he says. "I would leave as soon as possible if I just found the road and some money to get there.

"I've tried many times to go [illegally] to Italy from Patra, hiding under a truck, but it never worked," he adds.

He says he's tried the official, legal routes for asylum in Greece, which would enable him to live and work legally in the country.

"I've tried to claim asylum but I can't. It's very hard. Many times I've been to [the asylum office] but I never get a meeting. They always say I have to wait."

Using a mobile phone borrowed from a friend, Mahmoud speaks to his family in Iran at least twice a week. He gives them updates on his journey but never tells them the truth about his life in Athens.

"I tell them Athens is a good city, with nice people, but really, it's like someone has injected this city with filth," he says.

Mahmoud says there are no pimps operating in the park and that it is only the asylum seekers' desperate situation that forces them into sex work. But Hansen believes that not enough is being done to investigate whether anyone is behind it.

"Many [young refugees] are involved in sex for money," he says. "But whether they do it for survival sex, or just to get an allowance, or if it is more organised, this we don't entirely know and it's an area the authorities don't really want to touch.

"It's taking place so obviously. You can just go to the park and solicit a 15-year-old ... It is going on in front of our eyes and no one is really doing anything."

In November, Greek police told CNN that "they had not had any reports of unaccompanied minors involved in the sex trade in [Pedion Areos or Victoria Square]," but said they were "aware of the problem and working to address it".

The office of the Prosecutor for Juveniles, which is responsible for unaccompanied minors in Greece, told Al Jazeera that it had begun an investigation in December into the issue but that the investigation was ongoing. They declined to answer any further questions about it.

Mahmoud says that uniformed police officers sometimes patrol the park, but that evading them has been easy so far. "When the police come, if they come, we just go into the bushes and hide and they don't know we are there."

* The names of sex workers and clients have been changed to protect their identity

Is this the better life they were hoping for? These people run to the countries that invade and bomb them, when what awaits them in their homes is better for them. Millions of refugees went to Muslim countries like Pakistan, Saudi, Lebanon, etc. and they are doing much better than these ones. Even the so called humanitarian refugee camps in the west are a joke with no shelter from weather elements nor any food aid or better life prospects.